Talks on new national strategy for women’s rights to start next week

Discussions on a new national plan for women's rights will begin next week, Minister for Equality Aodhán Ó Ríordáin has said. He said the National Women's Strategy, published by the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat government in 2007, was "well past its sell-by date" and he invited the National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) to meet him on what a new strategy should contain.

Mr Ó Ríordáin was addressing a conference in Dublin yesterday, A Woman's Place is in the World, hosted by the NWCI and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The conference coincides with the 20th anniversary of the UN Declaration and Platform for Action on Women's Empowerment. It was adopted in Beijing in September 1995 by 189 countries, including Ireland.

The Minister for State, describing inequality as a “thief”, said deliberations from yesterday’s conference – which heard numerous calls for renewed urgency in the pursuit of women’s equality – would form the basis for a new national women’s strategy.

Among those addressing the conference were deputy executive director of UN Women Lakshmi Puri; Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan; former president Mary Robinson; master of the National Maternity Hospital Rhona Mahony, and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald.

Dr Mahony called for contraception, including the morning-after pill, to be free and available where young women in particular could get them whenever they needed.

She also said it “galls” her that the HSE had paid millions of euro to families after birth injuries in maternity hospitals, but had failed to invest in enough midwives and obstetricians to provide safe maternity services.

Ms Fitzgerald called for greater urgency on women’s inequality. “We must ensure we act much more quickly to say we want it done in our lifetime,” she said, “so the next generation can benefit from those changes.”

She called for more women when policy choices were made. “The policy choices that can be put in front of us can have quite deep-rooted and embedded assumptions behind them which may not take account of the gender dimension.”

President Michael D Higgins said he had accepted a United Nations invitation to be a global champion of women's and girls' rights. He said all men should be feminists.